Last week we looked at Deneb in the Cygnes constellation and this past week I have been fruitlessly trying to get a decent photo of the Milky Way.
I have tried numerous combinations of camera settings and lenses to try to capture our beautiful galaxy but no luck just yet but I did manage to capture The Summer Triangle. Vega, Altair and Deneb high in the evening sky.
The Summer Triangle
Trying to get a photograph of the Milky Way is turning out to be a great way to learn more about my Camera and the cosmos. It's a lot of fun and has kept me rather busy over the last few days/nights.
Last week the other members of the Summer triangle were obscured by clouds so this week has been great for observations. I uploaded the image above to Astrometry to get the details of what I had captured and this was the result below.
Altair identified
Altair is at the bottom right of the summer triangle. It is a staggering 16.73 light years away from us here on earth. It is the brightest star in the Aquila constellation. It is observable with the naked eye as it is the twelfth brightest star in the night sky.
For those of you with a technical interest here are the results of the star field search conducted by the Astrometry software.
Center (RA, Dec): (295.679, 7.792)
Center (RA, hms): 19h 42m 43.050s
Center (Dec, dms): +07° 47' 32.376"
Size: 11.8 x 5.89 deg
Radius: 6.592 deg
Pixel scale: 27.1 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: Up is 34.7 degrees E of N
WCS file: wcs.fits
New FITS image: new-image.fits
Reference stars nearby (RA,Dec table): rdls.fits
Stars detected in your images (x,y table): axy.fits
Correspondences between image and reference stars (table): corr.fits
KMZ (Google Sky): image.kmz
World Wide Telescope: view in WorldWideTelescope
Below is a close up view of Altair in cool blue.
Altair
If you were to set foot on Altair it would be a chilly 7,700 kelvin (7.7K − 273.15 = -265.4°C or -445.81 Fahrenheit in old money.
So where is Altair right now? A quick hunt using the excellent American Astronomical Society Worldwide telescope I found my photo. Here it is below.
Altair in real space/time
Altair on American Astronomical Society Worldwide telescope
There is so much more to discover right from your own back yard. We just have to look and try.
It's cloudy again tonight but I will have another go at capturing the whole Milky Way.
So far I have discovered about 300 ways 'not' to capture the Milky Way!
It is just a matter of time, research and experimentation before I get what I have in my head into the camera.
This is how science works.